Before the candidates to become Los Angeles’ next police chief were interviewed for the job, they each waited alone in a room 54 stories high with a panoramic view of the city they wanted to protect and surrounded by a collection of faces that have come to be associated with power.

Photographs featuring Ronald Reagan, Henry Kissinger, Bill Clinton and Cesar Chavez adorned the walls of the Yvonne Burke Room at the City Club on Bunker Hill.

But noticeably absent was the likeness of the most powerful man casting a long shadow over the interviewing process.

In the process of choosing the next chief, William J. Bratton has been elevated to the near saintlike status that, for example, the memory of Ronald Reagan has served for presidential candidates of the Republican Party.

“There’s wisdom in saying you want to be like Bratton,” said Jessica Levinson, director of political reform for the Los Angeles-based Center for Governmental Studies. “It’s smart politically to position yourself that way if you’re trying to succeed him.”

Indeed, this past week, many of the 13 candidates who were interviewed spoke about how, if picked for the job, they would model their own tenure after Bratton’s. And perhaps reflecting some city officials’ desire to keep his reforms in place, 11 of the 13 semifinalists were selected from within the department’s own ranks.

The move by these candidates borrows a page from elective politics, where just as Republicans have often tried to model themselves after Reagan, Democrats have many times aligned themselves with the legacy of John F. Kennedy.

But it is unusual in seeking to become chief of the LAPD, where Bratton’s recent predecessors – Bernard Parks, Willie Williams and Daryl Gates – became unpopular with the public, the rank and file or both.

John Mack, president of the Los Angeles Police Commission, the citizen panel that will be selecting the three finalists, said it was obvious the candidates for chief hold him in high esteem.

“They all have a very high regard for Chief Bratton – there’s no question about that,” Mack said. “He has raised the bar, and I believe they want to respect his legacy and all he’s accomplished and build upon it.”

Seven years of progress

Leaving at the end of the month, Bratton has been lavishly praised for his seven years’ work to dramatically reduce crime, elevate the department’s reputation and implement federally mandated reforms that some once thought to be impossible.

Bratton’s success and his stature within the department and the city led to a kind of Bratton mantra coming from the lips of candidates who spoke with reporters after their interviews.

“Chief Bratton has set the bar very high,” said Deputy Chief Charles L. Beck, commanding officer of the Detective Bureau.

“The next chief will be faced with higher expectations because of the success under Chief Bratton,” said Deputy Chief Sergio G. Diaz, who oversees the Central Bureau.

“Chief Bratton has set the bar really high, and the best thing about setting the bar that high is that he has some of us who are really great high jumpers,” said Deputy Chief Mark Perez, commander of the Professional Standards Bureau.

Others like Assistant Chief Earl Paysinger, director and commanding officer of the office of operations, emphasized Bratton’s role as a leader.

“Chief Bratton has left a leadership example,” Pay-

singer said. “I think the next person will have a wonderful mosaic with which to work.”

Jim McDonnell, first assistant chief and Bratton’s chief of staff, was among those who said they had articulated to the commission a vision for building on Bratton’s successes.

“So I look where we are on the crime front, on the counterterrorism front, the success we’ve had in getting compliance with the consent decree,” McDonnell said. “We’ve got to ensure there’s no slippage on any of those issues.”

Levinson said the almost unanimous attempt to align themselves with Bratton, while a safe move, was also an attempt by so many inside candidates to portray themselves as the natural heir to Bratton.

“Of course, Bratton groomed all of these people,” said Raphael Sonenshein, a California State University, Fullerton, political science professor who served as executive director of the city’s Appointed Charter Reform Commission and closely watches Los Angeles politics.

But it is also ironic, he said.

“There was a time when all chiefs wanted to model themselves after (legendary Chief William H.) Parker,” Sonenshein said. “And if Parker is the exemplar of the pre-

reform LAPD, Bratton is the exemplar of the post-reform.”

Bratton is also significant, Sonenshein said, because he is the one chief who managed to survive the shift from one mayor to another in the era following Proposition F, the 1992 voter-approved reform that included removing the police chief from civil service protection.

Sonenshein called Proposition F the dividing line between the old and new LAPD.

“Bratton becomes like the Parker of the post-Prop. F LAPD and proved you could cut crime without dictatorial authority,” he said. “That’s a pretty big deal for a city that assumed you always had to make this devil’s bargain of letting the LAPD be unaccountable in order to have safety.”

Bratton, Sonenshein said, is also important because he proved that reform could work.

Emulating an `outsider’

“Now it’s also ironic that you have all these insiders emulating a guy who was hired as an outsider when before 1992, the tradition was the reverse,” he said. “It was almost impossible for an outsider to be considered.

“Now it’s the insiders who want to be chief who are molding themselves after an outsider.”

But the ultimate irony may not be that Bratton has urged city officials to pick his successor from among the insiders within the senior command, most of whom he hand-

picked.

“I think that he has had a succession plan in mind since the day he got here,” Beck said. “That’s one of the things that makes him great. He sees the future. He deals with the future in the present, and I think this department is ready to move forward.”

Mack, who has not hidden his own admiration for the departing chief, thinks that ultimately the next chief will, to the degree possible, do it his or her own way.

“When all is said and done,” Mack said, “I think they will want to make their own mark and be their own person.”

This is the first in a two-part series; check back on Monday for part two.